[BRLTTY] Space, Enter, Backspace not usable as modifiers

[Devin Prater]

Thanks for all the help, I’m a sort of beginning intermediate Linux user. I didn’t make any modifications to the BRLTTY configuration file. I found the prefs file, disabled the Quick Space, and BRLTTY is back to working great! Thanks so much!

> On Apr 10, 2020, at 5:12 AM, Dave Mielke <Dave at mielke.cc> wrote:
> 
> [quoted lines by Devin Prater on 2020/04/10 at 00:03 -0500]
> 
>> BRLTTY has always worked very well for me, but this evening, I came to the Pi
>> and found that many settings had been set in strange ways; I have no idea how.
>> For example, typing was turned off, and screen cursor was set to not be shown,
>> and to blink.
> 
> Something must've modified brltty's preferences file (which, as Mario has
> already said, is usually in /var/lib/brltty/brltty.prefs), or maybe it was even
> removed.
> 
>> I fixed a lot of those, and restarted the Pi, but found that when I hold Space
>> and press P, for example, it just writes “p”. When I press Enter, it makes
>> whatever dot 8 would be in computer braille. It is the same with Backspace.
>> So, I can’t enter the preferences menu. 
> 
> I think you (perhaps accidentally) turned on the Quick Space setting. When on,
> pressing space along with the dots for a character types that character
> followed by a space. We implemented that feature because some other vendors
> have, but it has turned out to be a bit of a trap when there's no non-chord way
> to get into the preferences menu to turn it off.
> 
> There is, however, a way to turn it off - manually editing the preferences
> file. Edit the file /var/lib/brltty/brltty.prefs and look for the line that
> says quick-space (it might say braille-quick-space). If it's set to 1 then
> change it to 0. If it says yes then change it to no. Then save the file and
> restart brltty. And then, of course, don't ever turn it on again. :-)
> 
>> I’ve tried deleting the /etc/brltty.conf file, but that didn’t fix it, so I
>> touched a new one and hope I didn’t break things further.
> 
> that wasn't a good idea. Do you have a saved copy of it somewhere? Do you
> remember what customizations you might've made to it?
> 
>> Also, the “brltest” command doesn’t seem to be on my system.
> 
> That's because it isn't installed.
> 
>> So, any ideas? Is there a way to completely reset BRLTTY?
> 
> Removing the preferences file, and then restarting brltty.
> 
> -- 
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